Recently, the Northwestern University School of Law surveyed the progress, status, and future of the groundbreaking Peer-to-Patent (P2P) project in a podcast conversation with Manny Schecter, IBM’s Chief Patent Counsel, Mark Webbink, professor of law and executive director of the Center for Patent Innovations at New York Law School, and Christopher Wong, Postgraduate Fellow at the Center for Patent Innovations at New York Law School.
The P2P discussion coincided with the release of a paper entitled “Peer to Patent: A Cure for Our Ailing Patent Examination System” from the Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, which examines the Peer-to-Patent and considers project’s ability to help heal the patent system.
With current and previous P2P pilots demonstrating positive results and potential for greater impact, and additional global patent offices considering pilots in the future, we look forward to collaboration among more and more global patent offices to further implement and optimize the untapped benefits and efficiencies that the project can deliver to the patent examination process.
It could be quite beneficial for patent examiners to receive prior art from this peer review program. My question, however, is whether they will actually review it. At least one recent study has indicated that patent examiners often disregard prior art submitted to them by applicants. If examiners similarly tend to ignore third-party prior art, I’m not certain how influential this program will ultimately be.
Some data available on the peer to patent website (first year and second year anniversary reports -http://peertopatent.tumblr.com/) show examiners are not ignoring third-party prior art submitted to them through the Peer to Patent system. The volume (and quality) of prior art from Peer to Patent versus submissions from the applicant may explain why examiners would review third-party prior art submitted through Peer to Patent. It seems the real question, to be tested in the recent pilot phase, is scaleability – how well this ‘citizen participation’ idea will work with broader subject matter and larger pool of patent applications.